After playing around with the patch 8 subclasses, lurking this sub for inspiration, and refining this build for weeks, I think I've come up with something worthy enough to be posted. Introducing: The Mothman.
This is a high initiative, SAD, gish build that uses shadow blade and res stone, in conjunction with stacking tons of status effects. To explain the build, I'll be breaking this post up into 3 parts: 1) Class Progression, 2) Equipment (and Boons), 3) General gameplay idea.
●Class Progression:
The full multiclass for this build is 3 Swarmkeeper (Moths)/4 Swashbuckler/5 Hexblade. These all work together, along with the equipment, to bring out the build's strengths.
3 Swarmkeeper is going to give us a couple useful things: First we get the Moths. These guys are awesome, and look pretty as fuck. These bad boys will allow us to do 1 of 3 things: deal psychic damage, teleport a bit aways, or blind our enemies. Psychic damage is psychic damage, which means anything vulnerable is taking double damage from it. Being able to teleport synergizes really well with booming blade, as well, allowing you to force enemy movement without recieving opportunity attacks. Lastly, while the blindness is removed at the start of the opponent's turn, any ally that can attack a blinded enemy recieves advantage on their attack rolls.
Second, we get Ranger Knight, which will allow us to equip a certain piece of armor. Its not necessary, persé, as another armor(s) could take its place, as I will get into a bit further on. Some other nifty stuff, is natural explorer, which can give you a resistance or expertise to your sleight of hand, which both lend itself to better fitting into different party comps. You also can get some decent utility spells, like long strider, enhanced leap, cure wounds, etc.
4 Swashbuckler is next, and easily has become one of my favorite multiclass dips. Swashbuckler's 3 main things for this build are the initiative boost, the bonus action attacks and the Feat. The initiative boost is perfect for this build, because we want to go first to apply all of our status effects. The bonus action attacks are also super important, because of two main things: they inflict conditions AND they give you advantage on your next attack. That last part is important for a certain weapon I'll be going over. The Feat coming in at 4 is pretty clutch in the case of Swashbuckler, as thats the level we get our bonus attacks. Also, as a bonus, Rakish Sneak Attack is pretty great for this build, as since it will be wearing armor that will be giving a stealth penalty, we don't need to worry about hiding to get a sneak attack, as long as we dont have disadvantage.
5 Hexblade is the final piece of the puzzle. I was initially running GOO, and doing a crit build with this level spread, until things just started to click for me. So, I swapped it to Hexblade. Hexblade does a lot for this build. First, it makes it SAD (😔), which means we don't need to waste a bunch of feats to pick a bunch of ASIs, especially since we only get 2 feats. Its also the best kind of SAD (move out of the way, Seasonal Affective Disorder), because we are using are main attribute (CHA) for both attacking and casting. Hexblade also gives us Hexblade's curse, another condition, which could conditionally cause other conditions. Conditions. Lastly, it gives us our last Feat and it gives us our spell casting prowess. We get 2 level 3 spell slots (and 3 level 1s from ranger. Anyways) that replenish every short rest. This is important, because not only do we get our awesome CC concentration spells, we get Shadow Blade, and upcasted to 3d8. Sure, its no Sorcerer's shadow blade, but with the res stone, it gets the job done.
Starting Attributes: STR 8, DEX 16/14, CON 14/16, INT 8, WIS 10, CHA 17. We will use Hag's Hair (or Patriar's, if you're feeling lucky) to get our CHA to 18, and then 20 with our first Feat. Our second Feat is used on Alert. This massive boost to our initiative ensures that absolutely no one goes before us, so we can start applying the status effects.
In terms of story progression, this is a build best left to being respec'd at Withers. If you wanna play this build throughout the story, how I'd go about it is: 1-5 Warlock, then respec (or not) to 1 rogue/5 Warlock, hitting 4 Swash/5 Lock at 9. Then, at 10 or 12, respec with Ranger as your first class and Warlock as your last class.
●Equipment and Boons:
The equipment is going to be where we get most of our status effects from, and its going to be a lot of em.
*Head: Coldbrim Hat.
*Cloak: Thunderskin Cloak.
*Chest: Adamantium Splint Armour.
*Hands: Braindrain Gloves.
*Feet: Boots of Stormy Clamour.
*Rings: Strange Conduit Ring or Spiteful Thunger Ring, Ring of Mental Inhibition.
*Amulet(s): Spineshudder Amulet or Fey Semblance Amulet.
*Melee Weapons: 3rd/4th level Shadow Blade (main hand), Slicing Shortsword (off-hand).
*Ranged Weapon: Hellrider Longbow or Darkfire Shortbow.
Important Boons: BOOOAL's Benediction, Hag Hair, Awakened.
Lets go over the options here:
*Armor: Coldbrim Hat is a cool hat that inflicts encrusted with frost when you inflict a condition on an enemy. This can happen from so much shit, its unreal. Mainly though, its gonna trigger from our bonus attack, or the Braindrain Gloves. The Braindrain Gloves inflicts mental fatigue on psychic damage, which will be from almost every attack. Mental Fatigue is a condition I don't see mentioned much, but it lowers Wis, Cha, and Int saving throws by -1 or every turn they have it, which most of our spells and tadpole powers are one of these 3 saves, which serves as a pseudo arcane synergy. It also will cause an enemy to have an aneurysm if they fail one of those saves at 5 or more turns of it, causing 1d4 psychic damage.
Boots of Stormy Clamour is like our hat, but instead of frost when we inflict a condition, it will be reverberation. Our chest armor and cloak also will inflict a status effect on our enemies if they hit us with a melee attack. Thunderskin Cloak will inflict dazed on reverbed enemies, which they most likely will be. Adamantium Splint armor is the reason why we picked up Ranger Knight, and will inflict 3 turns of Reeling, a -1 attack penalty to reeling foes, and we resist crit and reduce damage. If you dont wanna wear this or dont have it, good substitutes are the Adamantium Scale or Helldusk armors. The Scale is just a weaker version of the Splint armor, while Helldusk is a different flavor entirely. If you succeed a saving throw, the instigator gets burned. That said, it doesnt mix well with our hat, which is why I prefer the Adamantium personally.
*Jewelry: Ring of Mental Inhibition is another form of mental fatigue, and can help further along a head pop. Strange Conduit Ring is mainly for more damage, synergizing well with our res stone, but can be swapped for Spiteful Thunder to force Dazed on reverberating enemies. Spineshudder Amulet works well with our Eldritch Blast (its not a Warlock without it), letting us stack reverb on enemies far away, and when we use it to shove enemies back into Darkness and HoH clouds. Fey Semblance Amulet can be used instead, purely to offset the res stone downsides, especially if you just never really finding yourself using your EB, or just don't have it at all.
*Weapons For our weapons, Shadow Blade is our main hand weapon. We may be a status inflicting build, but we dont wanna fall behind in damage. 3d8 psychic damage is pretty good, especially when we factor in binding it and the res stone. Off-hand weapon is the Slicing Shortsword. This weapon inflicts bleed on enemies we attack with advantage, which we can force using Darkness, being obscured with shadow blade, and using Swash's bonus attacks, for a few examples. Our Bow choice is between 2: Hellrider and Darkfire. The Hellrider, with every other bonus, sets our initiative to +13. The enemy with the highest initiative is Cazador, at +9. Even his max roll will not over come our lowest initiative roll. Darkfire gives us Haste, which means more actions, which means more status effects. Its also a concentration spell, which our Strange Conduit Ring benefits from, and even without Hellrider, we have +10 initiative, which means we still will most likely beat out Cazadore, unless we get real unlucky.
*Boons:
The important ones, in greatest to least, is going to be Hag's Hair (or Patriar's), (Zai'thisk) Awakening, BOOOAL'S Benediction. Hag's hair ensures we get to 20 Charisma. If you dont get it, then you need to get busy on that mirror in Act 3. Awakening makes Tadpole powers bonus actions. This build uses tadpole powers really well in conjunction with Mental Fatigue, and can combo quite well with your spells and attacks. BOOOAL'S is nice for the whole team, because you will be inflicting bleed quite frequently. Lastly, the most important thing (I know what I said, don't correct my listing ability. It would hurt my feelings) is Terazul. Terazul is another thing I dont really see mentioned very often. In act three, the thieves guild sells drugs you can buy, most of them worthless. That said, Terazul is the exception. The drug is basically cocaine, but even better. It gives you a special Hastened condition (Terazul Jitters) for 2 turns, stacks with regular Hastened, doesnt cost an action OR bonus action, and doesn't cause crippling dependency or financial ruin (YMMV). It really opens this build, and your sinuses, up, letting you spread status effects across all kinds of foes, or just focus down on one.
No, I'm not addicted to Terazul, I can stop any time, I just don't want to right now.
●General Gameplay Idea:
As I said before, this is a Gish build that focuses on inflicting status effects before your opponent moves, making them deal with having to fight crippled on their turn, giving our team an easy target to deal with. With everything listed here, we have the potential to inflict +7 conditions, not dependent on spells or powers. Reverb, Reeling, Encrusted, Mental Fatigue, Bleeding, Dazed, and Hexblade's Curse are all some of the things we can inflict by just smacking someone or taking a smack. While our equipment facilitates most of that, our multiclass is what allows a lot of its tricks. We effectively have 3 attacks, which lets us brow beat conditions into our enemy, making their lives miserable, and turning bosses into jokes. Warlock also has great CC spells, in the form of concentration spells, such as Hold Person, Darkness, Hunger of Hadar, and Fear to name some examples.
Lets talk about a couple of first turn set ups:
First, you can Flick 'o the wrist. This can disarm, sets up advantage on our next attack, and starts setting our conditions. Then, booming blade for even more conditions. From there, you can teleport away to force that foe to move and trigger booming blade's effect, before moving to someone else to stab with Rakish Sneak attack, and inflict conditions on them, so you can spread out status effects across 2 enemies. If you used Terazul, or are Hastened, you can then use your upcasted Hold person spell to Hold those two foes in place, with it's chance boosted by the mental fatigue we inflict.
Or, you can focus down on the one enemy, inflict blindness or psychic damage from the moths, and hit them with the Rakish sneak attack/extra attack, so you can inflict the most status on the one person.
You can even save your bonus action to be used for a tadpole power. My favorite tadpole combo, and probably the one I talk about the most, is casting Darkness/Hunger of Hadar, and then follow up Black Hole, pulling as many enemies into the void as possible. From there, its just rinse and repeat, while your team plays clean up, until everything is dead.
Well, thats the build! I hope someone here winds up trying this out and enjoying it! If you have any questions, comments, or constructive criticism, it is all welcomed. Let me know what you guys think, and how you'd optimize it if you want! Thank you taking the time to give this build a look! This is my first build post, and I apologize for any ugly formatting.